


the queen holds the checkmate

by magisterequitum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Spoilers, post-adwd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she is not what he had thought to find. set post-adwd</p>
            </blockquote>





	the queen holds the checkmate

He expects to find a girl.

Instead, he is greeted by a woman.

 

-

 

Rumors abound throughout Westeros now.

That the Golden Queen has found her lion's mane shorn and cut; which Jaime bristles at and then laughs because a lioness can never lose her mane; he cannot leave, he does not leave.

That Winter has come for them all, and the snows in the North hide the horrors of stories none remember all the words to, only the frightening images that could be created in the mind's eye.

That dragons have been born again and the Targaryen girl has let them loose across the Sea as she will do to Westeros when she comes.

That there exists a bastard girl in the Vale who resembles too closely one of a House that most think all to be dead. 

 

-

 

It is the last that draws Jaime's attention.

His neck still bears the rope marks where he'd nearly been killed a fortnight before. Promises and promises, and everyone would take them but never remember that delivery was too hard to be done so soon.

His head owes a debt of gratitude to Brienne for speaking out for him against Lady Stoneheart's desire to see him hung. Another debt to be paid, one he insists upon despite her assurances that they are even now; never even, never.

Jaime stokes the small fire they had been able to make despite the snows, and turns his head to the two opposite of him. If he has to listen to the wench and her knight speak anymore, he might turn himself back over to the undead creature of Lady Stoneheart just for some quiet. "What did you say, wench?"

Brienne turns to him and the flames make the gash across her forehead even uglier. "It was Ser Hyle who heard it in the village."

Another spared the noose too.

His eyes narrow, impatience eating at him. "Out with it then, Hunt. What did you hear?"

The other man's mouth twists in displeasure, and well Jaime could fix that if he would like; he has hit one man before with his new hand, surely one more would not matter. "The villagers speak of whisperings of a girl in the Vale. The lords there are restless with the heir so sickly, a weak boy to be sure. But it must simply be a bastard because this girl has muddied hair."

Brown the man means, but Jaime's mind turns at the thought. The Mockingbird has never been a man he likes, and certainly not one he trusts, but this seems too much of his ways.

He blinks, mind made up, and looks back to the other two where they have gone back to talking about other subjects. He interrupts, "Pack your things. We head out early."

 

-

 

He thought to be greeted by Baelish himself.

Instead he peers over an opened door in the floor of the throne room and finds humor in the fact that he could not fly despite his nickname.

 

-

 

Jaime has never visited the Eyrie, never stepped foot onto the basket and allowed himself to be hauled up by a system of pulleys and cords where one snap would send him plummeting to the ground below.

He has likewise never entered the great hall, the throne room of the Eyrie, home of the Arryns who are long dead now. He does not find it pleasant, wanting the giant hall of the Rock or even of King's Landing.

The wind snaps through the chamber, whistling off the walls, whipping the cloak on his back and making it snap at his heels like a rapid dog would. In the center, before the dais, is the source of the wind. The Moon Door, open to the gray and the clouds below, and the room is freezing for it.

Freezing but the figure on the high backed chair on the dais shows no sign of feeling it. White and gray and blue she wears, and she bends her head, inclines towards him, and asks, "Why have you come?"

There is recognition, she knows who he is, and how could she have forgotten. He sees her too, sees the girl who once blushed under his graces in the muddied courtyard of Winterfell, sees the girl who watched her father die and struggle to survive under the heavy gazes of lions who wanted her dead too.

And because he has no other answer, Jaime replies, "I came to save you."

A smile, such a sharp thing on a sharp face full of angles and devoid of any of the youth she once held. The corners of her mouth curve, and it as wolf's smile she gives him. "Then you are too late. I have already done your work for you."

And then she laughs, throws her head back, exposes her long, pale neck and laughs. High pitched and crazed, and Brienne shifts in nervousness behind him.

Mad, Jaime thinks, am I always to be beholden to mad rulers.

 

-

 

He thinks to find a girl in need of protection.

Instead it is a woman who keeps him alive once more.

 

-

 

Sansa Stark rides out of the Vale with a modest amount of troops at her back. Her hair shines glossy red, vibrant against the dull grey of the snow above and below and all around them; they had washed the dye from her hair. Trophies too of those she has claimed as her own, she wears on her cloak; a familiar mockingbird pin and a strip of tattered white cloth that once would have matched the Kingsguard cloak on Jaime's own back.

"Queen in the North, they call you," Jaime tells her once they stop for the night.

She bites her lip, bent over the map of the North in front of her. King's Landing is not on her mind. Her home, the broken ruins are what she desires, a broken kingdom for her broken self. "I know," she answers, blue eyes peering up at him, her fingers stilling on the worn map where she traces their path for tomorrow.

He cannot resist, and bares his teeth. "Your brother held that title too. He did not live long for it."

She does not rise to his bait, his challenge, as if something inside her is too dead to acknowledge his words. Instead, she gives him that wolf's smile again, sharpness and dread, and answers, "Then let us hope I live longer than he did."

She will.

He no longer bets on anything, so harsh Westeros has turned, but this he is certain of.

 

-

 

He expects to have a girl who knows nothing of war or blood or death.

He remembers then that she has seen all too much of it, has lived a life of war for the past several years, and delights in it now.

 

-

 

"I will do it myself."

Her voice rings clear through the yard, and her eyes are so harsh as she stares at the dirtied figure of Ramsay Bolton before her. Bolton's men, all traitors too to the North and House Stark, are lined behind their leader, breathes misting in the early morning.

Jaime stands at her shoulder, turns his head down, and not completely because she is tall now, tall and a woman completely. "You are sure?"

"Yes," she draws the knife at her belt; a wickedly curved blade that Jaime had taught her to wield after she'd asked. "It is the way of a Stark to carry out the sentence. My father did and so shall I."

Sansa Stark steps forward and he does not follow.

The blade drags across Bolton's neck and his blood splashes over her hands and the furs she wears, staining the gray and blue cloth of her dress. With one hand she tangles the dying man's hair and thrusts him forward towards her enemies.

And when she speaks it is with the dying man's wheezing gurgles. "I am Sansa Stark of House Stark and the North is mine."

Her men cheer behind her, but Jaime has eyes only for the woman before him.

 

-

 

He believes to find his last chance for honor.

It is that and not that and more that waits for him.

 

-

 

Her hands are insistent as she sheds him of his tunic. They tug fiercly, pulling him to her, moving him how she pleases.

He lets her because she is learning to take now, and she will need that, and he finds it amusing to see her so.

"And what shall you do now?"

Winterfell is still in ruins. The North broken and fractured. The South beyond help now according to some; he thinks of his sister, the shorn lion queen, and how he still is not without her.

She blinks languid eyes at him, tilts her head and the slope of her bare shoulder is lovely. "I have my home. I have the North. I will see it rebuilt." She kisses him, bites his lip and tastes blood. "And I will destroy any who tries to take what is mine."

He does not hide the shiver at her words.

 

-

 

Jaime thinks to find a girl.

He finds a queen instead.


End file.
